INCUBATING NEW IDEAS AND NEW VOICES

New York Public Radio continued to lead the industry in innovation by being the place where new ideas and new voices take shape. Here are some of the things we incubated in Fiscal Year 2015.

Werk It! How to Be a Grown Ass PodcasterWNYC hosted the first-ever women’s podcasting festival, “Werk It! How to Be a Grown Ass Podcaster," on June 4–5 in The Greene Space. Approximately 250 people gathered for this invitation-only, two-day conference that featured keynote addresses by Roxane Gay (author of Bad Feminist) and Pat Harrison (president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting). Participants included representatives from WNYC, WBEZ, WGBH, KPCC, KUOW, WLRN, NPR, Gimlet, Midroll, BuzzFeed, Slate and Radiotopia. The women in attendance took away tangible strategies for pitching new show ideas, scaling up their podcasts and making their voices heard. Two public events were part of the festival: a comedy show called “How to Be a Grown Ass Woman” hosted by Sara Schaefer and featuring The Daily Show’s Jessica Williams, High Maintenance creator Katja Blichfeld, and NYMag.com advice columnist Heather Havrilesky; and a taping of BuzzFeed’s popular podcast Another Round.

Podcasts for TV SuperfansThroughout the fiscal year, WNYC remained at the center of the cultural conversations spurred by America’s obsession with great television. As highly anticipated programs were broadcast, WNYC released a series of podcasts recapping and analyzing the action. WNYC’s Brooke Gladstone hosted a House of Cards podcast, Radiolab Executive Producer Ellen Horne hosted a Mad Men podcast, and Caitlin Thompson, editor of WNYC.org, hosted a podcast recapping Empire. WNYC also launched Duplicast, a podcast hosted by “two cloned women from another dimension.” It is the only Orphan Black fan show about clones, by clones, for clones and other humans. Duplicast, hosted by Anna Rubanova and Siobhan Thompson, is not an Orphan Black recap podcast. It is a podcast that contains recaps, but also very silly things.

Podcast AcceleratorThe WNYC Podcast Accelerator is the first of its kind in the dynamic podcasting space. In June, WNYC invited podcast ideas from around the country, choosing five diverse finalists from hundreds of submissions. After they gave their final pitches at the Online News Conference, two winners were chosen: Nancy is a lighthearted LGBTQ magazine show, and The City combines true investigative reporting with deep character profiles. Both podcasts will be piloted in Fiscal Year 2016.

The New Yorker Radio HourIn April, the New Yorker and WNYC announced a partnership to produce a new national radio program and podcast. The one-hour weekly program is built around the New Yorker’s award-winning writers, artists and editors. The program launched as part of the weekend schedules of public radio stations across the country last fall (Fiscal Year 2016).

We also come to this project, I think, with certain shared values that are not in infinite supply. They include: deep reporting; a devotion to intricate and innovative storytelling; a refusal to pander to the audience; a sense of fairness but an unembarrassed willingness to take a point of view; precise and careful editing; a devotion to the truth with the knowledge that the full truth is always just beyond human reach; a willingness to spend resources to go to where the story is; a sense of modesty and decency and humor; and a willingness to correct mistakes. That we fall short of our own principles and values is a daily given. But that we are devoted to them must also be a given. If that is overly righteous, so be it.

(David Remnick, “Radio Is an Obsession of Mine,” an edited version of his remarks from the 2015 Public Radio Program Directors conference about The New Yorker Radio Hour. Printed in Current, October 20, 2015.)